


Sorcery & Shenanigans

by Argonautical



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Hogwarts, Drama, Everyone's In It Eventually, F/F, F/M, Fluff, Hijinks & Shenanigans, Hogwarts Professors, Humor, M/M, Multiple Pairings
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-30
Updated: 2019-01-04
Packaged: 2019-09-02 21:03:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 17,864
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16794703
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Argonautical/pseuds/Argonautical
Summary: When all the Hogwarts staff are Overwatch characters, mischief, drama, and romantic engtaglements are bound to ensue! And what's more, Headmaster Reinhardt Wilhelm's had the crazy idea of hosting the Triwizard Tournament again. It's going to be an interesting year.A collection of humourous one-shots, dramatic stories, and crazy capers. Chapters published every Friday evening GMT. Accepting prompts and suggestions!





	1. Staff Meeting

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, Argo is alive. May I present to you, a multichapter ongoing series of chaos and fun! More notes and housekeeping at the end, this is just a springboard chapter to set everything up. Dedicated as always to my wonderful gf and beta, @Kallinkelly, who has endured dramatic readings of every chapter (with the accents). Enjoy!

The Hogwarts staffroom, in its lifetime, had been many things. At first, a storage cupboard, and then during the great Dysentery Crisis of 1524, converted into an overflow toilet for students and teachers alike. It had not been until erstwhile headmaster Phineas Nigellus Black had become exhausted with the rigmarole of entertaining the teachers he despised in his office that the smart idea to convert the now disused lavatory into a staffroom had occurred to him.

The result was, by the time of Professor Wilhelm’s meeting, that the staffroom was not exactly fit for purpose. The house-elves had been kind enough to cover the two remaining urinals (unremovable due to a permeant sticking charm) with a quilted throw, but the fact remained that the twenty-something members of Hogwarts staff simply did not fit inside.

The general rules today were ‘finders keepers losers weepers’ and ‘early bird catches the worm’ as there was a limited amount of seating. Herbology professor Ana Amari, who was well known for not being present when you most needed her and for appearing when she was least welcome, was somehow the first to arrive. It turned out that she had fallen asleep by the fire by accident, completely forgetting that Professor Wilhelm had planned the big meeting for this afternoon. Madam Ziegler, the matron, arrived in a towering temper. This was swiftly explained as the Potions Mistress Professor O’Deorain glided in after her with a wicked grin, as if just having won an argument. They sat on opposite ends of the table, glaring at each other.

Reinhart Wilhelm rubbed his temples with his gnarled fingers and wondered just how he was going to deal with his already fractious staff after the announcement he was going to make in a few minutes. He watched Hana Song, his newest staff member and head of Charms, bounce into the room in lurid pink and blue robes that made his building headache even worse to look at.

They arrived in dribs and drabs; Professor Vaswani of the Transfiguration department entered, saw there were no seats and conjured an elaborately tooled claw-footed armchair for herself. She sat upon it with her fingers steepled, waiting, and did not offer to conjure anyone else a chair.

“Right!” Reinhart boomed, hands slapping down on the table and upsetting Professor Zhou’s mug of hot chocolate. It spilled all over the issue of _Modern Muggle Issues_ that she was reading, its cover page advertising a story about melting icecaps. Reinhardt wondered why they just didn’t conjure more ice. “Are we all here? Headcount, Torbjörn?”

From the high stool that compensated for his short stature, the Deputy Headmaster swivelled around and made a note of how many had assembled.

“We’re missing Professor Amari the younger and Madam Oxton.”

“Fareeha will be with us shortly; she’s escorting some guests onto the grounds. As for Lena…”

The whole faculty turned towards the staff room’s one, rather murky window. A dark shape was approaching with worrying rapidity, getting larger as it hurtled towards the window. Professor Vaswani had the sense to flick her wand and throw the window open, because a second later, a windswept woman on a broomstick swooped in and came to land in a heap over the blanket-covered urinals.

“Good to see you, Madam Oxton. Arriving in style, as ever.” Reinhart chuckled as he helped her to her feet. She tried to smarten herself up, but years of flying had given her hair a permanently windswept look. She turned red and muttered her apologies before hopping up onto the window-ledge, which was now the only available seating.

“Anyway. Thank you all for coming to zis meeting! I know you are all deep in preparation for the start of term tonight, or perhaps enjoying ze last few hours before ze children return…” He winked at Professor Shimada, who quickly hid the flask he had been sipping out of. “But, I haf a big announcement to make!”

“Unless it’s a thirty percent raise and free foot rubs for all staff, I’ve wasted my time turning up.” Professor Amari muttered to Madam Ziegler beside her, who burst into silent giggles while trying to look like she was paying attention.

“I’m sure old Reinhadrt would give you a foot rub himself if you asked.” Madam Ziegler replied. Torbjörn turned to the both of them and made a violent shushing motion with his claw-hand, a remnant from his time in the Dark Force Defence League. As soon as his back was turned, Ana leant over again.

“As long as it’s not Torbjörn giving the foot rubs I’m not fussy.”

The Deputy Headmaster, apparently having had enough, swivelled around in his chair with a vein pulsing in his temple and smoke coming out of his nostrils. “Nobody is getting ANY FOOT RUBS!”

Reinhart faltered in the middle of a grandiose speech about the legacy of Hogwarts. A shocked silence stretched out to all four corners of the room.

“Starting as chaotic as usual, then.” Professor Vaswani rolled her eyes. “I don’t know why I bother sometimes.”

Reinhart took a few seconds to recover his flow, feeling the concentration in the room slipping through his fingers. He’d prepared a whole rousing speech, invoking everybody from the Four Founders to Merlin to Albus Dumbledore.

“As – as I was saying, the core passion we bring to the magical arts –”

“Passion?” Professor O’Deorain snorted quietly to Professor Winston, a man almost as large as the wardrobe he was squashed up next to, “I don’t know about passion. I’ve been phoning it in for at _least_ the last ten years.”

“- those trained at Hogwarts have gone on to shape the future of the world –”

“Speak for yourself, Moira. Some of us have passion for our subjects.” Winston growled.

“How is Astronomy still a subject? Do you need specialist training to look at a moon these days? What’re your N.E.W.T exams like – “Question one, identify the big glowing circle in the sky? The giant squid could pass astronomy. With Exceeds Expectations.”

Given that Professor Winston stood over six foot tall and was an abnormally muscular, hairy man, Angela and Ana thought Moira might be batting a little above her weight in taking him on. But Moira was like that – always needling and mocking her colleagues and students alike. If she wasn’t such a brilliant potioneer, Angela was sure somebody would have hexed her into a pile of frogspawn by now.

“Say that again, O’Deorain…” Winston threatened, very slowly removing his glasses and seeming to strain a little at his robes.

“Winston! Chill out!” Professor Zhou patted him gently on the arm. “Remember those anger management classes.”

Winston looked dearly like he would like to forget the ‘management’ part of anger management and hex Moira flying out of the window that Lena had just arrived by.

The meeting was falling apart. Reinhart threw all his planning out the window and bellowed in his loudest, most eardrum-shattering voice.

“TRIWIZARD TOURNAMENT!”

Dust fell from the eaves of the room. Several dislodged spiders fell into Professor Zhou’s lukewarm hot chocolate, and one of the covered urinals cracked slightly.

The silence was deafening – or perhaps they were all temporarily deaf from the volume of Reinhart’s yell.

“Hah! Zat got your attention, hmm?” He crossed his arms over his robes with a grin. “Now, if you’ve finished gossiping like students, you can listen.”

“Triwizard tournament?” Angela said quietly, looking as though she had just been told to swallow a bowl of slugs. “Reinhardt, are you mad? Last time they held one of those at Hogwarts, a boy died and Lord Voldemort returned from the dead! That’s about the worst case scenario that could _ever_ happen.”

“I understand your concerns, Angela! I do. But we’ve talked this through – months of secret meetings with the Ministry and the Headmistresses of Durmstrang and Beauxbatons – and we are one hundred percent committed to not enabling the rise of any dark lords this time around.”

“Well, I, for one, am totally convinced by that.” Moira drawled.

“Let the man finish, for Merlin’s sake O’Deorain!” Torbjörn said, waving his claw around threateningly. “I swear working with you lot is like having twelve badly-behaved children.”

“Don’t you actually have twelve badly behaved children?” Ana asked absentmindedly, counting them on her fingers. “Isn’t your oldest in seventh year here? Brigitte?”

“She is – don’t change the subject!”

“Thank you, Björn. I can take it from here.” Reinhardt soothed his friend and colleague with a motion. “You raise a valid point, Professor O’Deorain.”

“First time for everything.” Angela muttered to Ana with a scowl.

“So we have organised with the Ministry of Magic to have a squad of Aurors staying at Hogwarts and keeping an eye out. Fareeha went to meet them at the gate – they should be here any moment.”

“And the tasks?” Lena asked excitedly.

Reinhart smiled mysteriously. “Organised between myself, Torbjörn, and the new Head of the Department of Magical Games and Sports. You may know him – he used to be a Quidditch champion for Brazil.”

“Lúcio Correia dos Santos!” Lena hopped up excitedly. “He got the job then?”

“Yes. The Minister for Magic, Akande Ogundimu, swore him in just last month. He’s been laying low, I think, hoping ze ‘hype’ does not affect his first days in office.”

“He came from Brazil to join the Ministry?” Professor Shimada asked in surprise. “Do we not have enough of our own retired Quidditch players to take up jobs they are not qualified for?”

“Says the man who fled Japan and took one of those very same jobs.” Professor Vaswani raised an elegant eyebrow at him.

“Mr Correia dos Santos’ mother was British, before moving to Brazil as a child. He has always visited our country often and regards it with great fondness.”

“I got his autograph after the Brazil-Scotland game last year.” Lena said with a wistful, starry-eyed look. “He was incredible. Best Chaser in the world for the last three seasons, I’d say.”

“Then why did he take a desk job at the Ministry?”

“He was always talking in his interviews about making a greater difference to the lives of people. Maybe he thought he could do more good.”

“Whatever Mr Correia dos Santos’ motivations are, he could not be more enthusiastic about helping us run another Triwizard Tournament. He’ll be here shortly, when ze delegations from Beauxbatons and Durmstrang arrive at Halloween.” Reinhardt tried to re-establish his stride. “We have three tasks mapped out, and one quite special one – you will all see soon! Ah, Fareeha!”

A tall, dark-skinned woman in deep blue robes swept into the room, bringing two men behind her. The addition of three more bodies was almost too much, and Professor Shimada was forced to shuffle up and perch awkwardly on the armrest of Professor Vaswani’s armchair. It was hard to tell who looked less happy about this.

“Reinhardt.” Fareeha bowed slightly to him. “May I introduce Mr. Morrison and Mr. Reyes, of the Auror office.”

Both men looked extremely battle-scarred. Morrison was white-haired, with a large scar running across his face. Reyes was dressed all in black, his skin peppered with the burns left by hexes and jinxes and a chunk missing from his left ear.

“Good afternoon.” Morrison said in a gravelly rumble. Reyes nodded curtly by way of greeting.

“The Aurors have lodgings in Hogsmeade, and will be with us the whole year.” Fareeha explained. “As Professor of Defence Against the Dark Arts, they will coordinate through me. They are here to ensure everybody’s safety – and if any dark wizard tries to take advantage of the tournament, dispense _justice_.”

She cracked her knuckles as she said this, with the same excited look as Lena had shown when thinking about Lúcio Correia dos Santos. It was a little scary, and also a little sexy, Angela thought. Fareeha Amari had only joined the school last year, fresh from work with the Magical Law Enforcement Patrol. She was very business-like, focused, and enthusiastic about teaching her students how to defend themselves. It was a shame that Angela hadn’t spent much time with her outside their professional roles.

“Angela? Hello?”

“Wha- yes? Sorry?” She shook herself back to the present with a blush, realising that she’d been staring. Guiltily she chanced a look at Ana, who was appraising her with suddenly very narrow eyes from behind her cup of tea.

“I asked whether you would be happy for the Aurors to check your supplies in the Hospital Wing to make sure you have everything you might need – including specific and exotic remedies – for the tasks ahead.”

“Oh. Yes. Of course. Come by any time.” She was looking at Fareeha as she said this, but the Professor seemingly ignored her.

“Vunderful!” Reinhardt clapped his hands together. “Well, if there’s nothing else, you’re all free to go!”

“I have a question.” Lena’s hand shot into the air. “What about the Inter-House Quidditch tournament? Are we cancelling that? I read that they did last time.”

“Good question. But I do not think we need to. We will plan tasks so zat they do not clash with scheduled game, I do not see why we must cancel Quidditch when only one Hogwarts student will be competing!”

“Here here!” Lena cheered. “Otherwise you would literally just be paying me to teach the first-years to fly like once a week for the first term.”

“I agree, that would be a terrible financial decision.” Professor Vaswani added.

The meeting over, the teachers started to filter out in groups, talking excitedly. Several stayed around the staffroom table gossiping about the tournament.

“I didn’t think we’d ever have another one.” Mei admitted, pulling on another cardigan with a shiver. She flicked her wand and closed the open window.

“Nor did I. And come to think of it, why is Hogwarts hosting it again? Shouldn’t one of the other schools?” Lena asked.

“They didn’t want it.” Fareeha swept over and seated herself, putting her boots up on Professor Vaswani’s vacated armchair. “They only agreed if Hogwarts did all the organising – and footed the whole bill.”

“You knew about this, ‘Reeha?” Lena asked.

“Not from the beginning – Reinhardt only told me last week when we finalised the Auror squad.”

“Hmph. That makes sense. You never could keep anything from me for long, habibi.” Ana said.

“Mum. Please. Here, I’m your colleague.” Fareeha’s cheeks reddened. “And I can keep secrets! I’ve kept loads of secrets from you.”

“Have you now?” Ana’s eyes twinkled with mischief. “A new boyfriend, perhaps? Didn’t you run off to Egypt to chase some dark wizards hiding in tombs over the summer? Did you meet anyone there, some ruggedly handsome Auror, perhaps?”

Fareeha’s eyes bulged and she looked very fixedly down at the table. “ _Mum_.”

“Ooh, tell us Fareeha!” Lena elbowed her in the ribs. “Trust me, dating outside of the country is smart. I have to see Em every day here, it’s a nightmare trying to keep anything from her.”

“Your fault for marrying the school librarian.” Ana teased.

“I imagine it was a relationship of convenience more than anything.” Moira spoke from behind them where she was shrugging her way into her cloak. “Probably because you couldn’t reach anything past the third shelf.”

“Oh, shove off O’Deorain.” Lena huffed.

“Terribly sorry. I’m wrong. It was bold of me to assume you can read at all.” Moira snickered. “Did you fall in love as she was directing you to the picture books, or while she was teaching you the alphabet?”

Still chuckling at her own wit, Moira sauntered out of the staffroom with a sweep of her cloak. Lena sunk down into a chair, her jaw clenched.

“Just ignore her, Lena.” Fareeha said commandingly. “Professor O’Deorain is just bitter. She couldn’t even get a goblin to date her.”

“Spoken like you have experience with goblin dating?” Ana asked in an undertone.

“Of course no-”

“ – I remember in your sixth year, you were going out with – what was his name? Tariq? He had a goblin-y look about him.”

“Mother, I swear, if you are going to bring up my childhood in front of my colleagues I will find a way to have you smothered by your own Venomous Tentacula and make it look like a tragic accident.”

Ana affected an exaggerated expression of heartbreak. “You’re so cruel to your poor mother.”

Fareeha looked about to say something, but closed her mouth tight shut and shot to her feet. “I have much to do, as I’m sure you all do too. Good day.”

She walked out. Angela watched her go, a sinking feeling settling in the bottom of her stomach. So, Fareeha had dated men. That meant it was very unlikely she’d ever have a chance.

“Madam Ziegler, don’t look so stricken.” Ana said once Fareeha had fully disappeared. “She may have dated Fariq, but she broke up with him for Amara.”

Angela struggled to get her face under control. “Am I that easy to read?”

“Not necessarily, but I am a lonely old woman with a mischievous nature and a _lot_ of spare time. I’ve seen how envious of Lena and Emily you are, and how you look at my daughter. Between you and me, I’d prefer her dating a respectable healer like yourself than all these Auror types she’s gone through over the last few years.”

“What do you mean by ‘all’?” Angela gulped.

“Well. Many short relationships. They usually end in huge arguments, and then duels. Then trips to St. Mungo’s. Once she cursed somebody’s pancreas out.”

Angela’s mouth went very dry. Lena, who was in fits of giggles, roused herself long enough to offer some consolation.

“I’ll still be your friend, Angie, even if you don’t have a pancreas.”

“Thanks, Lena. That means a lot.”

“Yes, we’ll support you!” Mei agreed, who was halfway through pulling on another cardigan. She had somehow put on three more in the time they’d been talking. “I’m an excellent wingwoman. I know lots of icebreakers!”

Despite the support, Angela wondered how she would ever get up the courage to ask Fareeha – strong, confident, razor-sharp Professor Amari – out. Sure, Lena and Emily had been a successful couple, but they were generally advised to avoid dating within the workplace. They weren’t going to forget what happened to the last Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher, whom Fareeha had replaced last year. He had pursued a relationship with Professor Vaswani, and apparently not been up to her standards. Rumours swirled around the actual events of their breakup, but they knew the man had been chased off the Hogwarts grounds by a hundred animated suits of armour carrying spears and had never been seen again. The fact that the entire second floor had been covered in shattered glass and blood the next morning, and that two students had discovered several live leopards escaping from Professor Vaswani’s office shortly afterwards had elevated the whole incident to the status of Hogwarts legend.

“Well,” Lena said, checking her watch, “The students’ll be here in a bit. Another year starting.”

Ana sipped her tea with a secretive smile. “I have a feeling this one will be rather interesting. Don’t you?”


	2. The Welcome Feast

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The start-of-term welcome feast sees a drunken pre-party in Mei's room, ferocious and highly illegal betting on the Sorting ceremony, and the many weaknesses of Professor Fareeha Amari.
> 
> CHARACTERS: Pharah, Mercy, Reinhardt, Tracer, Mei, Symmetra, D.Va, Moira.

Dusk fell on a fine, bright evening. The sky was peppered with twinkling stars, as if Jamison the school poltergeist had punched tiny holes in all the school curtains. The students might be alighting the Hogwarts Express, but the teachers – the teachers were preparing themselves mentally for the welcome feast.

The heads of house hurried around their common rooms and dormitories inspecting everything before the students arrived. This might seem slightly over the top, but Professor O’Deorain discovered a nest of flesh-eating grubs underneath a scatter cushion in the Slytherin common room, and the wrath of Satya Vaswani echoed through the hallways when she found that the second-year Ravenclaw girls’ dormitories contained a rip in the space-time continuum that led to the planetary surface of Jupiter.

“It’s unprofessional! How would it have looked if we lost several students to deep space on the first day of term?” She seethed later on as several of the younger teachers gathered in Mei’s office, the most spacious, to prepare for the feast.

“As opposed to those fourth-years you lost last Easter?” Fareeha asked with a small smile.

“The inquiry determined that I was not responsible for their foolish experimentation.” Satya pursed her lips sourly. “Honestly. Trying to become animagi without proper training… what did they expect? If you ask me, Boris Stubwell was lucky to end up as an armadillo.”

“How is he now?”

“I am told he is very happy in his enclosure at London Zoo.”

“Gosh, I hope I don’t lose any students.” Hana Song said nervously, biting her nails while Mei plaited her hair into a French braid. “I don’t remember losing any in my year…”

“Not true – remember, what was his name, Singh?”

“Savander Singh?”

“Yes! That’s the one.” Lena, who was reading the Daily Prophet with a tankard of butterbeer perched on her knee, nodded. “I heard he got on the wrong end of a drunkenly-cast Nostril-Enlarging Hex at a Bludger for my Valentine concert and ended up in St. Mungo’s permanently.”

“Ouch.” Hana winced. “Not that I’m surprised. Singh had the brain capacity of a flobberworm and the common sense to match.”

“It’s odd to have a student I’ve taught come back as a teacher.” Mei admitted. “It makes me feel old!”

“Well, Hana’s the exception to the rule.” Lena pointed out. “Being a ‘child prodigy’ and all.” She winked to Hana, who blushed and looked away, causing Mei to almost tear a chunk of her hair out.

“Ow!” She winced.

“Sorry! Sorry, sorry, sorry!” Mei said, desperately trying to save the plait.

“It’s okay. But I’m not even the youngest teacher, am I? What about Efi?”

“Efi doesn’t count. She was never a student at Hogwarts. And you know that Centaur of hers does as much teaching as she does. Orisa, I think she’s called?” Fareeha asked, not knowing the elusive Care of Magical Creatures teacher very well at all.

“Yeh, Orisa. As far as Old Reinhart will tell me, Efi was raised by centaurs in the woods or something. She knows more about magical creatures than anyone can learn through books. And she gets our kids through their exams really well.”

“It sure is wonderfully convenient we don’t have any pesky child labour laws or anything.” Lena said with a shrug. “Then again, if I was a feral wolf-child with a pet centaur, I don’t think I’d much fancy learning how to conjugate verbs in a classroom.”

“Lena, you have literally structured your whole adulthood around avoiding being indoors.” Mei pointed out.

“Don’t hate me because you ain’t me.” Lena toasted and downed her butterbeer.

They continued like this in good spirits for some time, until the bottle of firewhiskey Lena produced from some unlikely concealment in her robes was almost empty. The five of them tottered down into the great hall just as the first students were filtering in through the front doors from their carriages, taking their seats in a rather forcedly sober way. The other teachers were seated in their best robes, save for Professor Lindholm, who would collect the first years getting off their boats across the lake, and Efi, who was guiding said boats through what must be a stunning evening out on the placid waters.

“Are you okay, Fareeha?” Angela asked, putting her hand on Fareeha’s suddenly as the first students took their seats. Fareeha jumped a foot in the air and her fork shot straight at Angela’s face, missing her right ear by half an inch and embedding itself in the back of her chair, the handle quivering.

“Yes!” She said very quickly as Angela extracted the fork with a puzzled look. “My apologies… you can take the woman out of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, but…”

“No, I should apologise for startling you.” Angela smiled, handing the fork back. “I only meant you look slightly… flushed.”

“O- oh. No, I’m fine. It’s just that we were getting ready for the feast, and Lena had some firewhiskey…” Fareeha blushed all the more, the pleasant vagueness of being four shorts deep making her shy. She beckoned Angela closer. “Between you and me, Matron, I can’t hold drink to save my life.”

“Really?” Angela asked, eyebrows raised and a small smile playing on her lips. “I would not expect the celebrated Fareeha Amari, vanquisher of the Anubis Hex-Thieves, to be weak to a little alcohol.”

“Fareeha Amari is weak to many things.” Fareeha chuckled, taking time to line her knife and fork back up exactly (probably to avoid making eye contact with the beautiful healer beside her, but that was a chain of thought to pursue another day when there weren’t now hundreds of students chatting merrily nearby).

“And what would those be?” Angela asked playfully.

“You would have to get Fareeha Amari much more drunk to learn those.” Fareeha grinned. “Can’t have everybody and their grandmother’s pet blast-ended skrewt knowing my greatest weaknesses, can I?”

Further down the table, the conversation was a little less loaded with sexual tension. Moira, Satya and Lena were busy sorting out a small pile of coins on the table in front of them.

“Are we really doing this again?” Mei asked from behind her hand, trying to avoid the scrutiny of nearby Professor Wilhelm, who was surveying his students and beaming but had surprisingly sharp hearing. “You know he doesn’t like the betting.”

“If they paid teachers a decent wage, we wouldn’t have to resort to gambling.” Lena shrugged, adding five more knuts to her pile.

“I wonder what you’d say if I threatened to tell Emily?” Mei said quietly, her glasses flashing in the candlelight.

“You wouldn’t.” Lena hissed.

“If Reinhart catches you, I will not hesitate to incriminate you.” Mei said.

“Gee, thanks Satan.” Lena grumbled.

“Don’t let the chubby cheeks fool you, Oxton.” Moira said with a flourish, completing her little Stonehenge of coins. “Professor Zhou is a stone-cold she-devil when you strip off the layers of fluffy cardigans like the circles of Dante’s hell.”

“You sound almost fond of her.” Lena rolled her eyes. “Shhh, the first-years!”

Like a line of terrified penguins, the first-years shuffled down the central aisle and awaited the sorting hat.

“Every year,” Lena whispered to Mei, “I hope that when the sorting hat starts singing, it’s going to forget the cryptic ‘house qualities’ song and break into a spine-tingling rendition of ‘My Heart Will Go On’.”

Alas, Lena’s deepest desire was not realised this year. The hat spoke of the four different houses and the qualities they each valued, but stressed that all houses should work together to foster an environment of inclusivity and learning.

“If that means I have to become O’Deorain’s tennis doubles partner, I’ll pass.” Lena muttered. As head of Gryffindor and Slytherin houses respectively, she and Moira could not quite shift the enmity their houses historically had. Of course, it could also be because Moira was an arsehole.

“You can play tennis with me any time, Oxton, as long as you bring that gorgeous wife of yours.” Moira smirked.

“Sure, I’ll bring Emily.” Lena said. “As a librarian, she knows a thing or two about ancient, decaying things.”

“You wound me.” Moira snipped. “Two sickles on the one with the eyebrows.”

Satya surveyed the crowd of shivering children. “I’ll take that action.”

They moved the money surreptitiously to the pot on Satya’s side plate. The sorting began, with Torbjorn reading out the names.

“Ardlington, Aaron!” Presumably named by his parents solely for preference in alphabetical lists, became a Hufflepuff.

“Azwar, Anati!” Was a minute dark-haired girl in a robe that swamped her tiny body. She had to climb up onto the stool, and the Sorting Hat fit her like a poncho.

“Three knuts.” Lena said.

“You honestly think she’s Gryffindor?” Moira snorted. “She’s a smurf! I’ll take that.”

“You can’t call the first years smurfs, Moira.” Mei said disapprovingly.

“Gryffindor!” The hat shouted. Lena smugly pulled six knuts back into her pile.

“This is going straight into the ‘buy O’Deorain a personality’ fund.” Lena said. Moira clutched at her heart as though deeply insulted, and pushed a galleon into the pot.

“Slytherin for sure.”

“I will match that.” Satya offered her own galleon as a freckled boy called Sophocles McManus. “Nobody calls their child ‘Sophocles’ without committing to a life of academic excellence.”

“Didn’t Sophocles write the play about Oedipus? The chap who bangs his mum?” Lena asked as little Sophocles donned the sorting hat and prepared for seven years of relentless teasing about his name whatever the outcome.

“Your grasp of classics makes my brain shrivel.” Moira said. “Shh! The hat’s deciding!”

“Hmm…” The old hat pondered. “Intelligent, yes, with a chip on your shoulder… hmmm…”

“Slytherin.” Moira egged it on, her long fingers fluttering over her at-risk galleon. “Put him in Slytherin and I will find you an attractive beret to get chummy with, hat.”

“Bribing the hat will not work.” Satya snorted. “The probability is unknown, rather than a simple twenty-five percent house-by-house split, which is what makes this betting highly illogical but exciting.”

“Whatever gets your rocks off, Vaswani.” Moira shrugged.

“Ravenclaw!” The hat shouted. Moira swore loudly enough to draw a sideways glance from Reinhardt, and Lena had to quickly lean over the table pretending to drop her wand to hide the pile of coins.

“However improbable the outcome, a critical mind always emerges victorious.” Satya said, pocketing both galleons with an aura of immense satisfaction. “If you play the game, Professor O’Deorain, you should be prepared to lose.”

The betting only got more heated from there through the alphabetical list. Incidentally, the child with the eyebrows that had been bet on earlier ended up in Hufflepuff, and despite her apparent dislike of gambling, Mei kept excruciating eye contact as she collected a handful of sickles from all of them.

The sorting complete, the children seated at their house tables and Moira’s purse significantly lighter (much to her displeasure), the feast began. All along the table, the staff were enjoying their first feast of the year. Winston tried to engage Ana in a conversation on the planetary alignment of Saturn, but was thankfully interrupted by the arrival of pudding.

After dessert – and the demolishment of three hot fudge sundaes between solely Mei and Rienhardt – the students were overfed, exhausted, and definitely ready to absorb a great deal of important information about the coming year.

“Velcome, one and all, to a new year at Hogvarts!” Reinhardt boomed across the hall, sending several enchanted candles crashing to the floor. One hit Aaron Ardlington, knocking him out for several minutes. He would not remember the speech in the morning.

“It is a pleasure to see you all back for another year, and to our new students – an incredible year avaits! I am Professor Wilhelm, your headmaster, and on behalf of all ze staff, I hope you will enjoy your time here.”

So far, so normal.

“It has been many years since the Second Wizarding War and the fall of Lord Voldemort.” Reihardt said, his voice even but his face grim. He bore the scars of an Auror, and had been one of the elite squad of Crusaders, Aurors who had fought against the Remnant Army of the Dark Side, the last-ditch attempt of the death eater’s and Grindlewald’s disciples to resurrect evil in the wizarding world. “However, Hogwarts remains mindful of the past, and determined not to repeat its mistakes. Here, we strive for understanding, for unity, and for, above all, learning!”

Lena and Fareeha shared a look along the staff table, not at all impressed with Reinhardt’s long-winded speeches.

“For years we have licked the wounds of the war and grown in confidence. But today, I am proud to say that Hogwarts will no longer look inward. We will expand our horizons, re-establish ties with wizards across the world. And to zat end, it is my greatest pleasure to announce that the Triwizard Tournament will be hosted at Hogwarts this year!”

Muttering broke out like chlamydia in a mixed-sex university dormitory.

“I know! I know, last tournament was – to be honest – a disaster! But we haf engineered this one to be as safe as possible. Only seventh-year students will be able to enter, and a squad of Ministry of Magic Aurors will be overseeing the whole thing. The students from Durmstrang and Beauxbatons will be here the day before Halloween, and we have three spectacular tasks planned!”

The student chatter only exacerbated, into the clacking chatter of a thousand frenzied crabs. “Triwizard tournament?” They whispered. “Cedric Diggory? He-who-must-not-be-named?”

“The inter-house quidditch tournament will still be going on, do not worry! Any students interested in playing for their house teams should speak to Madam Oxton.” Reinhardt indicated Lena, who gave a hearty wave. “For our new students, it should be noted that the Forbidden Forest is, eponymously, forbidden, and contains only empty promises and man-eating bugbears.”

“I’ll tell you what it contains, seventh-years trying to find a place to make out.” Fareeha whispered to Angela. “I’ve only been here a year, and you know how many couples I’ve caught trying to get a little private time?”

“What’s wrong with that? Teenagers will be teenagers.” Angela replied.

“What’s wrong is that I prefer my make-out sessions without angry centaurs or acromantula.” Fareeha said.

“Suit yourself; sounds very ‘vanilla’ to me.” Ana shot from a few places up, causing Fareeha to be consumed with a crisis of conscience for a good ten minutes before she dragged herself out of the dark pit that was being forced to imagine her mother’s love life.

“And with zat, I must wish you a good night, a fitful sleep, and a rested start to the new term! Go forth and bring glory to Hogwarts!”

The children, guided by the prefects, began to leave. Everybody was thankful that Reinhardt was not in the mood to demand the singing of the school song, which was a highly embarrassing and uncomfortable experience for just about everybody involved. Moira in particular was known to sing it to the tune of ‘The Rattlin’ Bog’, an Irish folk song that not only lasted forever but got successively faster every verse. The end result was always deeply competitive and on occasion openly aggressive.

Their winnings counted, Lena, Satya and Moira swept off towards their respective houses to aid with the acclimatisation of their students. Mei followed the Hufflepuffs to their ground-floor dormitory, and the other teachers drifted towards their quarters in ones and twos.

Angela and Fareeha ambled together up the grand staircase until they reached the first floor landing.

“This is me.” Angela motioned towards her office next to the Hospital Wing. “You, ah, have a good night, Professor Amari.”

“Please, call me Fareeha.” Fareeha smiled, bowing.

“You should come and see that book on hex counterspells I mentioned sometime.” Angela said. “I am quite sure Emily would not have such a rare volume in the library.”

“Absolutely. I’d love to.”

“Though I suppose we’ll both have our hands full with the tournament.”

“And the normal misdemeanours of the kids.” Fareeha grimaced. “I swear, when I was at school I never _once_ accidentally transformed anyone into a freshwater salmon. Kids these days.”

“I would have thought the internationally renowned Fareeha Amari would have no trouble with salmon, freshwater or saltwater.” Angela teased, her hand on her office doorknob.

“Oh, I don’t.” Fareeha smiled. “The problem will be when they stop, and I’ll have less of an excuse to visit the Hospital Wing.”

She winked, inclined her head to Angela and strode off towards her office on the seventh floor, her sea-green robes flowing behind her as she went. Angela leaned on the doorknob for support, and only once Fareeha was fully out of sight did she allow her legs to turn to jelly and crawl into her quarters, blushing from the roots of her hair to the tips of her toes.

Forget the Triwizard Tournament; Angela would be lucky to survive until Christmas at this rate.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another chapter! I've been reliably informed that Friday evening is not a good time to post traffic-wise, but it works well for me so I'll probably stick with it. Thank you to everyone who lefts kudos and comments, honestly it makes me so happy. I'll be stating the major characters in each chapter at the top for your convenience.
> 
> As always, prompts, constructive feedback, and gushing essays in the comments section are all accepted heartily.
> 
> -Argo


	3. AGNES!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hogwarts Librarian Emily Oxton clashes with poltergeist Jamison Fawkes over a secret involving her wife.
> 
> CHARACTERS: Emily, Junkrat, Tracer, Widowmaker

Professor Wilhelm’s announcement that the Triwizard Tournament would once again be played at Hogwarts had several ramifications. The first was an avalanche of angry owls from parents, threatening everything from hexing to disembowelment if he dared allow their precious children anywhere near a difficult or dangerous task. The second was a definite upswing in gossip and betting – amongst both students and teachers – as to which student would be chosen as Hogwarts champion. The staff betting pool in particular was becoming frenzied after Torbjörn had wagered six hundred galleons on his oldest daughter, which nobody could come close to matching. It was a question of whether the choosing ceremony happened before somebody lost their head and broke into Reinhart’s office to steal the betting pot.

The third reaction, and perhaps the most inconsequential to many, was that the Library was busier than ever.

Emily didn’t much mind the increased student traffic, but they all wanted to take out a narrow selection of books, namely _Hogwarts: A History_ and _The Second Wizarding War_. She supposed they all wanted to find out as much as possible about the tournament’s past, but the constant fighting over a limited number of copies was causing her a few headaches.

“Madam Emily, do you have Hog-”

Emily directed the third-year to a large sign she had pinned up by her desk, that said _THERE IS CURRENTLY A THREE WEEK WAIT FOR THE BOOK I KNOW YOU WANT._ The boy sighed and stomped off.

“Why do they never come in purely for the love of reading?” Emily asked herself, finishing stamping and sorting a stack of returned books. With a flick of her wand she set several quills to writing the rude notes she would send out to the students who had returned books late or damaged. The copy of _Encyclopaedia Gigantica_ returned this morning by a very timid fifth-year Gryffindor girl was floating in mid-air beside her desk, still dripping slime into a metal bucket. That would be a fine.

“Nobody loves _reading_!” Cackled a voice above her. Emily craned her neck to see Jamison Fawkes, the poltergeist, floating atop her storage cabinet and lining up all of her ink bottles so that they teetered over the edge of the shelf, ready to fall.

“Oh, deepest joy.” Emily didn’t need Jamison’s tricks today, not when she had a mountain of work to do.

“You know what kids like? EXPLOSIONS! You should chuck all your books out, and have BOMBS instead!”

“That sounds thrilling, Jamison, but is not covered by the school’s public liability insurance.” Emily levitated the notes into envelopes and sent them shooting out of the library through a high window, making their way to the various students who had committed literary misdeeds.

Jamison did a few loop-de-loops and floated beside her, hanging upside down with his singed hair tickling the surface of her desk. “What happened to you, Ems? You were so _fun_ at school! You got into _all_ sorts of trouble!”

“I grew up, Jamison, which makes one of us.” She got to her feet and started shelving, drifting through the stacks with a crowds of books following her like a papery school of fish.

“Oh, but Jamie Fawkes remembers!” He cackled, following her and tearing books off the shelves to join her floating procession when she wasn’t looking. “I remember, you got detention for a month for being caught behind this very bookcase with Little Miss Lena! The two of you were at it like rabbits! Rabbits!”

Emily flung the copy of _Manticore Husbandry for Dummies_ she was reshelving straight at him. It connected with a satisfying _thud_ and sent him spiralling backwards until he skidded to a rest in-between two bulging filing cabinets.

“Touched a nerve there, Jamie Fawkes has!” He muttered, shaking dust and post-it notes off his poufy Jester’s sleeves and straightening his bell-covered hat. “No wonder Madam Emily is so grumpy, what with the _delicious_ Madame Lacroix arriving in just a few weeks!”

Emily froze in place, currently trying to wrestle apart volumes one the three of _The Magic of Matchmaking: Love Potions for the Whole Social Calendar_ to place volume two between them.

“Who?”

Jamison’s eyes grew so wide he might accidentally lose one if he didn’t blink soon. He rose into the air and sat cross-legged atop one of the cabinets. “You don’t _know_ , Ems? About Dear Little Lena and the _delectable_ Madame Lacroix?”

“Stop babbling.” Emily snapped, but her stomach was flipping over. Did that name ring a bell? Lacroix? She was the headmistress of Beauxbatons, but beyond that Emily had no idea how Lena might know her.

“Jamie will show you!” He giggled and flew off along the stacks, stopping to pull books out and knock over reading lamps as he went. Emily chased after him, about ready to complain to Professor Wilhelm about the stupid poltergeist. She knew he couldn’t be controlled or removed – poltergeists came into being wherever the mischief of children was actively repressed – but perhaps Reinhart could exercise some influence over him.

“Here!” Jamison had reached the back catalogue of old copies of the _Daily Prophet_ , and pulled one out. “Wait – no! Silly Jamie, that’s the wrong one!”

He balled the newspaper up and threw it over his shoulder straight into one of the lamps, which set it on fire.

“Where is it? Hmm, hmmm, how many years ago? Oh, yes! Yes, have a look at this, and you’ll be _Envious_ Emily!”

He thrust a yellowing newspaper into her hands and zoomed away with an echoing cackle, making sure to push a few of the candles in the chandelier onto the floor as he left. Emily had to forestall looking at the newspaper for a moment as she prevented a major fire in the Inflammability section.

“What’s the big deal about the 357th Annual ‘Talk Like a Goblin’ Day celebrations?” She muttered, looking at the front page. She flicked through, looking for what Jamison was talking about. Of course, it was quite possible he was leading her on a wild goose chase. That was very much in-character for the Poltergeist. The only one who could really get him to scram was the silent, sulking caretaker Mako Rutledge, but Rutledge only ever intervened if Jamison was messing up something he himself was cleaning at the time, or if Professor Wilhelm ordered him to.

Then, she saw it. Plastered all over the gossip pages was a moving black and white photograph of her wife, Lena, in a compromising position in the Top Box of the All-England Quidditch Stadium with another woman.

The Lena in the picture was midway through a passionate kiss with an impossibly tall, curvaceous woman. She had perfectly pale skin, like poured cream, and a sheet of silken black hair down her back. Lips with dark lipstick left their mark on Lena’s flushed cheek. She saw the photographer and jumped a mile, wand out, and then the photograph went white for a moment before resetting and playing the scene all over again.

_All-England Quidditch Star In Steamy Rendezvous with France’s ‘Black Widow’_

Emily’s hands were shaking. Lena had never told her any of this. The date of the newspaper was some eight years previous, when she and Lena had been on a break and when Lena had still been a rising Quidditch star. But how could Lena have neglected to tell her something as public as this? Unable to look away but feeling quite like she was going to vomit, Emily read on.

_That’s one way to celebrate the greatest win the All-England team has had in the last year! Slam-dunk Seeker Lena ‘Tracer’ Oxton was snapped today enjoying a little ‘post-match celebration’ with France’s most infamous socialite, Amélie Lacroix. Lacroix reached the headlines last year as the young bride of French Ministry bigwig and Head of the French Department of Magical Law Enforcement, Gerard Lacroix. Mr Lacroix’s mysterious death in March this year sparked global intrigue as evidence came to light that incriminated his wife in his demise._

_Though never proven his killer, Amélie Lacroix has inherited his fortune and his taste for the company of the rich and powerful. We hope our ‘Tracer’ hasn’t got herself too tangled in the spider’s web!_

_Miss Oxton and Miss Lacroix both refused to comment. Miss Oxton threatened to show our Daily Prophet photographer ‘just how it feels to have your privacy invaded – with the spiky end of my broomstick!’ Perhaps we’ll be seeing more of this clandestine couple in the weeks to come, as France and England approach their face-off in the semi-finals of this year’s Quidditch World Cup._

For a kind-faced, freckled Scottish woman, it was remarkable in that moment how much Emily Oxton looked like a fire-breathing dragon. She tore the article in half and threw the part of the photograph with Amélie Lacroix on it into the small fire now spreading into the Politics section despite her earlier efforts. She stared daggers at the picture of her wife, who surely could feel the displeasure wherever she was right now. So, this Amélie Lacroix had wormed her way up to Headmistress of Beauxbatons, had she? And now she’d be staying at Hogwarts all year, and Lena had conveniently forgotten to mention anything about their previous relationship.

“Lena Agnes Oxton! You have some explaining to do!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a short little chapter with some Emily and Junkrat! And an interesting revelation about Lena's past that will have repercussions for a while... :D


	4. Why did it have to be spiders?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A snapshot into the life and plight of Angela Ziegler, Hogwarts Matron, on the day of the foreign schools' arrival.
> 
> CHARACTERS: Mercy, Soldier:76, Reaper, Moira

Madam Ziegler, the Hogwarts matron, awoke on the day before Halloween to the distinct and familiar feeling that somebody, somewhere, was doing something dangerous.

The sense of unease followed her all morning, although nothing but the usual tomfoolery happened throughout breakfast. She was so distracted by the tingling of her healer sense that she ended up spreading butter on Professor Shimada’s napkin by mistake.

“You seem preoccupied, Angela.” Fareeha mentioned between mouthfuls of scrambled eggs.

“I have a… feeling.” Angela muttered, her eyes still scanning the hall.

“You may have to be more specific than that.”

“A _bad_ feeling.”

“Oh.” Fareeha cocked her head to the side. “It’s not because Professor O’Deorain just arrived, is it?”

Moira was taking her seat at the other end of the table. “No, I’m used to the aura of spitefulness she emanates by now. It’s something else.”

Professor Winston coughed nervously. “I’m sorry, that might have been me.”

“What?” Angela asked distractedly.

“Oh – I mean, nothing, nothing.” Yet even as he spoke, the smell reached their nostrils and prompted several small coughing fits and made Satya retch slightly.

“Remind me to bring you a Draught of Flatulence Neutralisation at morning break.” Angela said, holding her nose.

“Or, he could stick a bar of soap up his arse and save us all the trouble.” Lena said across the table, her eyes watering. “Gosh, Winston, did you cave and binge on the peanut butter again? You _know_ you’re intolerant!”

“But it’s so good!”

“So is firewhiskey, but you’ll notice I’m not putting any in my coffee.” Lena shot back.

“Speak for yourself. The day hasn’t started until I’ve had a little absinthe with my cornflakes.” Moira waved her teaspoon lazily.

“Explains a lot.” Angela muttered, but could still not shake the ominous feeling in her gut.

Her Hospital Wing was relatively quiet for the time of year. Svetlana Arrhenius was still recovering from a bad case of fununculating tonguepox in quarantine in the corner, and needed her tincture of snake bile every half hour. Angela had insisted, too, that Raymond Orcinus stay overnight for monitoring after an unfortunate tangle with the giant squid during a Care of Magical Creatures lesson on grindylows. Of the two of them, the giant squid had come off better in the fight.

Several students and staff came and went during the day with minor injuries in need of attention. Two Hufflepuff sixth-years had got into a fight over a girl and attempted to duel for her affection, resulting in Angela missing lunch trying to return their arms to their proper positions attached to their shoulders. As it turned out, this had not been the result of their duel, but rather the response from the girl they had been fighting over.

“Did either of you think to _ask_ me if I wanted to go out with you anyway before assuming I’d magically start to fancy whoever won the duel?” She raged at them as they were brought into the hospital wing. “Try laying another hand on me with your arms attached to your arses!”

The girl received a week’s worth of detention from an incandescent Professor Vaswani, but maintained even as she was being dragged away that it had been worth it.

Just as the delicious smell of roast lamb cooking began to waft up from the kitchens and the sun was setting blood-red across the far horizon, Angela’s door slammed open to reveal two muddy, blood-covered men engaged in a furious shouting match.

“And we wouldn’t be in this mess if _you_ had actually _listened to me_ for once and checked the perimeter _counterclockwise_!” The auror Morrison growled, staggering in holding a seeping wound in his abdomen. His partner, Reyes, was supporting him, and sported a puffed-up black eye, three missing teeth and an odd, oozing slash dripping something green down his robes.

“And if you took your own head out of your arse for _two seconds_ , you’d have heard me say that I had to go and make sure that the charm allowing the delegations from Durmstrang and Beauxbatons to get through the _protego maxima_ around the castle was still working!” Reyes snarled back, depositing Morrison unceremoniously onto a bed. He gestured vaguely at Angela, then at Morrison, and sank into a chair, flicking his wand and conjuring himself a small glass of cognac.

“There will be no drinking in my hospital wing!” Angela fumed, sending the glass zooming out of his hand with her own wand. “What on earth happened?”

“Reyes ignoring orders, as usual.” Morrison said as she hurriedly drew curtains around the bedspace – she didn’t need Svetlana vomiting again at the sight of the injuries, especially not when she was still bringing up small amounts of frogspawn each time.

“Ignoring ord- you stuck-up son-of-a-”

“ _Silencio_.” Angela said smoothly, and Reyes’ mouth moved soundlessly. Anybody capable of reading lips or indeed body language would know that he was cursing fouler than a troll-keeper with a strong sense of smell. She turned to Morrison with her hands on her hips. “You. Tell me now, in short, factual sentences or I swear I will make it my mission to have both of you fired from the Ministry.”

“We perform a perimeter check every few hours.” Morrison grunted. “We split up to cover more ground, but I ran into acromantula by the forest. Reyes should have been there, since we normally meet halfway and he would know if I wasn’t there that something had happened. But he wasn’t, and I was overwhelmed.”

Morrison shot daggers at his partner over Angela’s shoulder. She pulled his robes open to reveal a deep sucking wound with several needle-like black hairs puckered around the skin.

“Well, you’re lucky. This is from one of its legs, not a fang.” She could deal with that in a trice. She grabbed a bottle of smoking purple liquid from her cabinet and washed the wound out, then knitted the tissue and skin back together with her wand after making sure no organs were damaged. “What about you, Reyes?”

“I’m fine.” He said croakily, the silencing charm wearing off. “Morrison’s okay?”

“He’ll be back wrestling acromantula by suppertime.” Angela said happily, applying a bandage doused in a strong herbal salve to Morrison’s wound, which was now just a raw, pink mark on his skin. “The question is, what happened to you?”

“I said, nothing.”

“Mr. Reyes.” She sighed. “I know that amongst aurors, gruesome stories of near-fatal injury are fun water-cooler chatter. However, if I allow you to die in my Hospital Wing there will be an awful lot of paperwork, and I have twelve nieces and nephews, all of whom I have promised hand-knitted jumpers for Christmas, so there is very much a premium on my free time.”

Reyes tried to give her a death stare, but the fact that he was going a diagnostically relevant shade of grey and slipping off his chair won out in the end.

“I reached Morrison just as he was injured. I cursed the acromantula, but it put up a fight. I… I get a bit too into it when I’m in a fight.”

“He was flinging stunning spells around screaming ‘Die! Die! Die!” Morrison chuckled. “But the spider got him before he could shoot its belly and send it scuttling away.”

Reyes lifted his damp robes to show a small, oozing puncture in his thigh. Green venom and blood dripped from it, with a mottled pattern spreading across his skin from the site of the injury.

Angela transformed from exasperated Matron to experienced trauma healer in the blink of an eye. Before Reyes could insist for a third time that he was fine, she had levitated him into the bed next to Morrison, applied a tourniquet to his upper thigh with a flick of her wand, and summoned a small apothecary’s worth of potions to her aid.

“Acromantula venom,” she said as she titrated Ferrous Activator into a beaker of Chelation Concoction, “Is one of the most dangerous venoms in the known world. You are lucky you’re not already dead, Mr. Reyes.”

She stirred the mixture and shoved the whole lot into Reyes’ mouth, clamping his nose until he swallowed it.

“What?” Morrison sat up in bed, wincing as he disturbed his just-healed wound.

“Go to the dungeons. Get Professor O’Deorain, ask her if she has an antidote to acromantula venom. This will only slow the spread.”

For how intently Morrison seemed to hate his partner, Angela had never seen a wounded man spring to his feet quicker. He was out of the door in a flash.

“Matron Ziegler… I don’t feel so good…” Reyes croaked, sweat breaking out on his forehead.

“You’ll feel worse if you die.” Angela snapped. “This is why you _tell_ your healers when you get injured, rather than pretending to be a big man about it”

He looked scared, and Angela could never stay angry with a patient. “Look, Reyes. You’ll be okay. As much as I hate to admit it, Professor O’Deorain is one of the most talented potioneers in the world. We’ll have you back to normal in no time.”

Morrison returned, Professor O’Deorain sweeping past him in paisley-patterned robes and a matching hat.

“Matron Ziegler.” She inclined her head. “How long ago was he bitten?”

“Half an hour, maybe.” Morrison said.

“Half an hour? How on earth did it take you half an hour to get from the forest to here? Did you three-legged race hopscotch the whole way and stop for Elevensies?” Moira snorted incredulously. “The efficacy of the antidote reduces if the venom has time to take hold. Although, if this idiot left it a whole thirty minutes, I must question that he deserves saving.”

“Which is why I’m the healer and you’re barred by law from ever entering another hospital.” Angela snapped. “Give him the damn antidode, Moira.”

“Oh, so now you need me I’m _Moira_ , not ‘Professor O’Deorain?” Moira smirked, twirling the vial of antidote in her long fingers. “How fickle, the heart of a healer.”

“Give him the damn antidote!” Morrison had enough and snatched it from Moira’s hand as she was preoccupied teasing Angela. He uncorked it, knelt at Reyes’ side and poured it tenderly between his lips. Reyes coughed and spluttered, but managed to swallow.

“Well? Did it work?” Morrison demanded.

“If it doesn’t, I hope he told you his preferred coffin wood.” Moira said with the sensitivity of a sledgehammer.

Controlling her dear urge to slap the smug Potions Mistress across the face, Angela checked Reyes’ pulse. It was still fast and thready, but that did at least mean he was alive. They waited for several minutes in tense silence, Morrison’s knuckles bleach-white as he gripped the sheets of Reyes’ bed. Eventually, Angela could not stop herself.

“The acromantula fang explains the thigh wound, but how did he get the black eye and the missing teeth?” She asked Morrison, thinking that she would need to squeeze the juice of a dentasprout for Reyes to help regrow the teeth if he recovered.

To her great surprise, Morrison blushed a little under his scars, a guilty look on his face. He declined to comment, instead staring intently at Reyes.

“Is it just me, or do you get an intimate sort of vibe from the two of them?” Moira asked Angela behind her hand. Angela did not deign to reply.

“Unnnhh.” Reyes groaned, opening his eyes and wincing. “Urrrrhhhh…”

“Gabe!” Morrison said, joy and relief thick in his voice. “You’re alive!”

“I don’t feel like it.” Reyes muttered, rolling over into the foetal position and convulsively clutching his leg. “Feels like somebody sawed my leg off.”

“Still an option.” Moira added unhelpfully. “Well, with my work done, another life saved and absolutely _no_ thanks for my efforts, I will make my leave. I have more important things to do.”

“What’s more important than saving a life?” Angela goggled at her.

“Well, I was in the middle of organising my sock drawer by thread count.” She smiled and flounced out to ruin someone else’s day.

Angela busied herself tending to the recovering Reyes, who needed constant surveillance and a complex sequence of blood-purging spells every few minutes to stop the remaining venom spreading through his bloodstream. Morrison sat by his side like a grizzled guard-dog. The smells of dinner became almost unbearable, and Angela checked her watch, sure that any minute now the delegations from Beauxbatons and Durmstrang would be arriving in whatever flamboyant manner they had planned this time. Reyes fell into a doze, his vitals stable, and Angela began to tidy up the mess of her sudden treatment.

“I punched him.” Morrison said suddenly.

“Wha- sorry?” Angela asked, almost dropping the armful of bandages she was carrying in surprise.

“I punched him after we got rid of the spider, for not turning up. That’s why he has the black eye and the teeth. When he didn’t meet me halfway, I got so worried that something had happened, I got distracted and the acromanulta snuck up on me… I’m getting old and soft.”

Morrison lowered his head, and planted a tender and wholly unexpected kiss on Reyes’ forehead. Angela cursed under her breath, not because she found anything wrong with their relationship, but because that meant that Moira was right about something. Again. The audacity.

“He is your…?”

“Husband. Thirty years this summer.” Morrison chuckled.

“But… your argument…”

“Bah. Old dogs get into a few scraps. Doesn’t mean I don’t love him, even if he is a wilful, arrogant, conceited son of a bludger.”

To see them together, outlined in the first silvery rays of the waxing moon coming through the hospital wing windows, gave Angela a warm feeling that she could not quite identify, but also made her very envious. To see Morrison and Reyes, scarred and greying but still alive and in love after so many years gave her hope that perhaps her demanding career did not preclude finding somebody to share her life with.

She made two resolutions that day. One, to never assume that a quiet day in the Hogwarts Hospital Wing was achievable, and two, to ask Fareeha Amari to the Yule Ball.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for your kudos and comments! Each of you, honestly, they mean so much. This chapter was planned from the beginning because Matron Mercy is Best Mercy. Enjoy, and Merry Christmas/Happy Holidays/Bearable Festive Season to you all! It's Argo's birthday on the 25th :3


	5. The Arrival

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The whole of Hogwarts gathers to witness the (over)dramatic arrival of the parties of Beauxbatons and Durmstrang. Mei finds herself infatuated, Lena and her wife get frustrated, and we all blame Susan Dennis.
> 
> CHARACTERS: Ensemble chapter!

While Angela was dealing with the fallout from your average afternoon acromantula poisoning in the Hospital Wing, the rest of the school had gathered out on the stone steps leading up to the double doors to the entrance hall. Nightfall, and the fact that it was late October, bought a chill wind to the air. Students clustered together for warmth, and the professors shivered and grumbled.

“You did say sunset, right, Rein?” Torbjörn muttered to the headmaster, who was standing happily with his hands on his hips and nothing on under his robes except a pair of shorts.

“Of course! Zey will be with us any second! Professor Zaryanova is never late. As for Madame Lacroix…” He scratched his neck sheepishly. “Well, she’s not exactly known for her punctuality. But when she does arrive, it vill be in _style!_ ”

“Hypothermia might diminish my appreciation for style considerably.” Satya snapped. “What use is this standing around?”

“Nobody said you had to stand.”

“Good point.” She waved her wand and conjured her favoured armchair once again. It sent several of the second-year Ravenclaws next to her flying backwards as it arrived, but Professor Vaswani took her seat, unconcerned, and brushed a little lint off her shoulder.

“Hey, Lena.” Hana elbowed Lena surreptitiously. “Where’s Emily?”

“Over there.” Lena said surprisingly sourly. “She’s being a grumpy old trout and I’m not going to indulge her.”

“What? Why?”

The tips of Lena’s ears went very red and she shot a sideways glare at her wife, who was discussing an article in the most recent edition of _Transfiguration Today_ on a man from Sheffield who’d accidentally discovered the cure spattergroit while trying to make his ex-wife vanish during an argument.

“She’s still miffed at me because I didn’t tell her that I briefly – bloody _briefly_ – dated Amélie Lacroix years ago.”

“You and the headmistress of Beauxbatons?” Hana gaped.

“It’s not like I kept it a secret! It was in the paper! Just because she went off chasing hexed manuscripts in Greece when we broke up – hell, we didn’t even _actually_ … we were on a break!”

Lena had raised her voice a little too much, because a gaggle of excitable Gryffindor sixth-years were making rather a point of pretending not to be listening but failing miserably.

“Oi! Go listen to somebody else’s conversation, Dennis! And you too, Pritchard! I don’t want my business scrawled all over the fourth-floor girls’ toilets like last time!”

“No idea what you’re talking about Madam Oxton.” Susan Dennis said blithely.

“I _know_ it’s you lot who’ve been keeping a ‘score board’ of boys in the school, and I _will_ find out where you keep hiding it. Poor Alexander Fletcher was in tears in my office for an hour yesterday.”

“He shouldn’t’ve scored a three point five then, miss.” One of the girls mumbled just too low for Lena to hear.

“What was that?” Lena’s arms were crossed over her chest now, the redness from her ears spreading across her cheeks.

“Nothing miss. I asked if you’d like to borrow some earmuffs.”

“I – eh? No, I’m fine.” Lena touched her ears self-consciously, then waved her wand. A few moments later, a knitted hat with a rainbow bobble soared out of a high window and dropped two hundred feet into her hand. She jammed it over her glowing ears, crossed her arms again and simmered in silence.

“What did she tell you?” Ana whispered to Hana a second later. Hana jumped, not having heard the herbology professor sneak up beside her. Ana was carrying a mug of boiling herbal tea and wearing a fleece-lined headscarf that looked twice as snug as any of Mei’s twelve jumpers.

“Huh?”

“Madam Oxton. What did she say about Madame Lacroix?”

“Are you trying to make me gossip, Professor Amari?”

“I’m aiding and abetting. Come on, give an old woman something interesting to think about. I’ve just got away from Professor Winston after a full twenty minutes listening to the many and varied wonders of asteroid orbits. Please, anything, or I’ll simply die of boredom right here.”

Hana checked that Lena was busy glaring at a passing bird, then leaned back and whispered behind her hand. “She says they were on a break.”

“Oh ho ho!” Ana said as though she were Sherlock Holmes cracking the Curious Case of the Philandering Flying Teacher. “A ‘break’, hmm? I wonder how long for until Lena fell into Lacroix’s arms… hmmm… thank you, Hana. You have been… useful.”

Hana, who had been looking between Lena and Emily, turned around to ask Ana what on earth she meant, but discovered that she was already gone. If it wasn’t weird enough already making the transition from Hogwarts student to Hogwarts Professor in only three years, now her old herbology teacher was trying to goad her into gossiping about their other colleagues’ sex lives.

She was spared the trouble of thinking too much more about it, because in the distance, something was approaching through the twilight gloom.

“Ah! Zat must be my dear Professor Zaryanova!” Reinhardt clapped his hands and wrung them in excitement. The whole school, which had dissolved into shivery chatter, all turned and stood to attention like they were magnetised.

“What is it?” Susan Dennis gasped, pointing.

“It’s a shape… like a giant centipede!”

“No it’s not, idiot. They’re riding horses!”

Both were wrong, the centipede one much more so. In fact, the delegation from Durmstrang Institute were coming down the path from the gates into the grounds, each riding a massive, hulking, saddled bear.

At the head of the procession was a woman as massive as the bear she was riding, her cloak billowing out behind her, muscles like bundles of barely-contained coconuts straining against her skin. Her hair was short and shockingly pink, but her face was kind and good-natured. In short, she looked like the sort of woman who would crush your whole body in a wrestling competition, then buy you a drink afterwards and tell you that you did really well.

The bears skidded to a halt in front of the stunned crowd. The Headmistress dismounted, scratching her bear behind the ears. Reinhardt came out to meet her and the two embraced with enough force to shatter ribs.

“Aleksandra!”

“Reinhardt, you old dog! How are you? You look grey!”

“And you look pink, my dear!”

Professor Zaryanova ruffled her hair with a great bellowing laugh. “A transfiguration class gone wrong! Ve are trying to find how to turn it back, but I’ve grown fond of it, I admit!”

They hugged, play-punched, and complimented/insulted each other for another few minutes until several of the gigantic bears started to growl ominously.

“I hope one of them eats Susan Dennis.” Lena said savagely.

“What was that miss?” Susan Dennis whirled around curiously.

“Nothing, Miss Dennis. Just asking if you like my hat.” Lena’s eyes flashed with the satisfaction of revenge.

“It’s nice miss. Did Madam Oxton the librarian give it to you, or Madame Lacroix?”

Lena had to be bodily prevented from strangling Susan on the spot by Hana’s quick use of the full body-bind curse, _Petrificus Totalus_.

“Ah, but we will reminisce in the warmth of the great hall, Aleksandra! What of your bears?”

“The Siberian wilderbears are really very civilised.” Professor Zaryanova said affectionately. “If you could set them up a tea party, and somewhere they can rest. Zey like raw meat and oreos.”

“Professors Oladele and Orisa will see to them.” Reinhardt indicated to his right, where Efi was raring to get going with the bears, her companion (and possibly surrogate aunt? Nobody was really clear on this) Orisa the centaur beside her.

“It would be my honour, Professor.” She bowed, and motioned to Orisa to help with the harnessed bears. The Durmstrang students shuffled further towards the castle, wrapped up in blood-red cloaks trimmed with thick fur. They seemed suitably impressed with the scope of the place.

Just as the Hogwarts students were recovering from the arrival of twenty massive bears, someone shouted and pointed to the gates. A bright blue glow was growing more and more intense just beyond the pillars with their statues of winged boars. Then, the breeze picked up, pulling the fallen leaves into a circling vortex around the glow. It got faster and fiercer, until the staff and students clung to each other for support and Lena had to grab her hat by the pom-pom as it flew off her head.

The vortex seemed to solidify into a revolving wheel of powder-blue satin, then died, leaving the grounds eerily still. Through the gates and down the path sashayed a group in flowing robes, led by a tall, slender woman in elegant purple silk. She was pale as the moon with skin perfect as porcelain, long black hair tied back into a shimmering cascade that swung behind her as she walked. Her eyes were amber, clever, and narrowed as if deciding whether or not she deigned to stay. In one hand, she carried a jewel-encrusted egg.

“Madame Lacroix, in the flesh!” Reinhardt barked, dropping to one knee and kissing her hand. Madame Lacroix gazed down at him with distaste.

“Professor Wilhelm.” She purred in a throaty voice, accent thick like syrup. “Take us inside, please. Ze journey has been tiring.”

“Tiring?” Mei scoffed. “They took a direct portkey. Durmstrang literally _rode bears_ all the way! _They_ should be complaining of tiredness, but Professor Zaryanova…”

Mei trailled off, temporarily lost for words as Professor Zaryanova heard her name and turned around, then flashed a wide smile at Mei.

“Yes, Mei?”

“Huh?”

“You were saying, something about Professor Zaryanova and riding bears?”

“Riding… Professor Zaryanova?” Mei said distractedly, then blushed so hard her glasses fell off.

“No, riding the bears!”

“Oh. Oh yes, the bears. Um. Never mind. I’m chilly, we should get inside.”

Lena and Hana exchanged looks, having never seen Mei act like this before. Ana pounced behind them, cup of tea still in hand as they filtered into the great hall.

“Perhaps yours will not be the only inter-school romance, hmm, Madam Oxton?”

A vein in Lena’s temple pulsed and her eyes bulged. “Listen here, you old interfering crone, WE WERE ON A BREAK!”

Emily, who happened to be midway through reading a chapter on dramatic timing, was handily passing at that very moment. She stopped dead, causing quite a backup of students behind her, and stared at Lena.

The look on Lena’s face could make even the most cold-hearted Death Eater agree that she was to be pitied. Emily’s face hardened and she ran off up the stairs to take refuge in the library, quite possibly crying.

“No, Em, wait!” Lena shouted after her. “Ana Amari, I swear when I have finished my grovelling apology to my wife, I will return to your greenhouses and burn your entire supply of teabags! You have my oath!”

With that, she sprinted up the stairs after Emily, shouting things like ‘You were in _Greece!_ ’ and ‘It happens to _all_ Quidditch players!’, and perhaps worst of all, ‘It wasn’t like I _enjoyed_ it!”

From somewhere higher up in the grand staircase, Emily threw the book she was reading and it hit Lena square in the face, dropping her like a sack of spuds and falling open on an addendum about Metaphors. Hana sighed, wondering if despite being the youngest she was the most mature of all the teachers on the staff. She went to fetch Madam Ziegler, who would need to heal Lena’s bleeding head wound; but Madam Ziegler’s skills were unlikely to extend to the patching up of her marriage.

By the time Hana returned and took her seat beside Mei, the feast was about to start. With three members of staff missing, but several new ones gained, the table still looked busier. Perhaps it was the addition of Professor Zaryanova and her broad shoulders, or the fact that Lúcio Correia De Santos was right that moment sliding into the seat one over from Hana. Lúcio was wearing bright green robes that lit up everything in a three-foot radius around him faintly, and pouring himself some pumpkin juice. Hana could not help noting that he was very, very handsome.

Perhaps another deputy head would have clinked a teaspoon against a goblet to bring quiet to the hall, but Torbjorn’s tried and tested method was smashing his claw hand against the table and letting the resounding bangs do the job. Either way, it worked well, and Reinhardt stood up to make his speech.

“Welcome, welcome to our fellows from Durmstrang Institute and Beauxbatons Academy! We come together to celebrate the first Triwizard Tournament in almost eighty years – may it be filled with daring deeds, clever tricks, and above all, unity between our three great schools. Though we are here to compete, the whole point of the tournament is to foster greater relationships with our friends from overseas.”

“You going to foster a relationship with Beefcake Zaryanova, Professor Zhou?” Moira hissed as they clapped. “Earlier you looked like you envied the bear she rode on.”

“You and Ana are both as bad as each other!” Mei said defensively. “You should start a club for old women who just want to gossip about everyone else’s love life because you don’t have a snowball’s chance in hell yourselves!”

Moira was unable to reply, because Professor Zaryanova herself stood up, as did all of her students. They were briefly confused, until they remembered that the visiting schools were each going to do a short display for the feast.

The best way to describe what the Durmstrang students did was if a tribal war-dance had been infiltrated with stage wrestlers. They grappled and tumbled, flipped and rolled, while beating a pounding song on their thighs and chanting in unison. Two students had a staged duel down the centre aisle, interweaving spells with dodges and acrobatics. This was pretty cool, except for one near miss involving a jelly-legs jinx, a seventh-year checking her lip gloss in the reflection from her side plate and a large amount of singed hair.

The sweating Durmstrang students bowed to much hooting and applause before taking their seats and high-fiving. Everybody couldn’t wait to see what the Beauxbatons students would do.

Madame Lacroix, in stark contrast to Professor Zaryanova’s ‘lead from the front’ style of headship, set her glass of wine down and motioned lazily to her students with one long-fingered and impeccably manicured hand. They stood and arranged themselves around the room, wands out, one boy removing a violin from its case.

He began to play, and the Beauxbatons students shot what looked like ribbons of shining silk from the ends of their wands, which flew up and tied themselves to the rafters. Grabbing a hold, they pulled themselves up with the strength and grace of ballet dancers and began a synchronised trapeze, launching around the hall above the gasping students. They swung from end to end, jumped from ribbon to ribbon, created more ribbons in mid-air, spun in tight circles and walked the tightrope high above the hovering mass of candles. The violin played an intense, quick tune, and by the time the Beauxbatons students finished, each hanging from the vast web of ribbons they had created, the hall was utterly hypnotised. It was a few seconds before people remembered to clap.

“Tres bien.” Madame Lacroix smiled, tapping her hands together.

“Do we have anything?” Hana asked curiously, since the other schools had put on such incredible performances.

“Unless you want to see my fifth-year class all simultaneously fail at basic vanishing spells, I am afraid we do not have a coordinated display.” Satya said.

“But what about our Quidditch teams or something? Lena trains some of the best! Her students always go onto the league, I bet she could put on a display?” Hana asked.

“Do you remember Hasan Al-Farouk?” Satya replied.

“Wasn’t he the guy that flew through the flaming rings for a bet a few years ago?”

“Precisely. And do you remember what happened to him?”

“I heard he still can’t sit down properly because of the extent of the burns to his bottom.” Hana said, then realised. “Oh. I now see why we don’t do broomstick displays in this room full of candles and torches.”

“Precisely. The school’s insurance company chairman had to take a sabbatical after that. He got so stressed, all his hair fell out and he grew scales.”

Apparently deeming this incredible statement as worthy of no clarification, Satya turned to her food. The feast had appeared in a second, filling the table to groaning point with roast meats, pot pies and steaming tureens of buttered veggies. Professor Zaryanova helped herself to seven chicken breasts and a whole tureen of broccoli, deep in conversation with Professor Winston about the benefits of a protein-heavy diet.

“Oh, please don’t encourage him any more.” Mei said anxiously. “You know, we have offices on the same floor and if he’s eaten something that doesn’t agree with him it’s like somebody let off a bag of dungbombs in the corridor.”

“Or perhaps you just want Professor Zaryanova to be paying attention to you, Mei?” Ana asked with twinkling eyes and what could best be described as a shit-eating grin. “If only Fareeha was here… I’m sure _she_ wouldn’t mind being introduced to dear Aleksandra.”

To cover Mei’s jealous look, Hana asked “Where is Fareeha anyway?”

“Since the Aurors had a small… accident while on patrol, she volunteered to do the patrol so that they could recover in the hospital wing.” Ana said proudly. “You know, Mei, if Professor Zaryanova doesn’t work out for either of you, Fareeha is still single. Just a thought.”

“Ana, you must stop pimping out your daughter!” Torbjörn said through shovelfuls of chicken hotpot. “I see my Brigitte, such a strong, independent young woman, and I know she needs no man to be great!”

“Bjorn, your daughter is seventeen. Mine is thirty-two! She has so few fully fertile years left, and it would be such a shame not to continue the Amari bloodline!” Ana sighed. “Not that Fareeha would know a good partner if hit her in the face. She always picks the wrong ones!”

“Wrong for her, or wrong for you?” Torbjörn asked slyly.

Ana glared at him. “Just because you have twelve children does not make you an expert on child-rearing, Björn! It’s not a case of quantity over quality; the relationship between the number of offspring you produce and your parenting skill is not, alas, proportional.”

“If it shows you’re got at anything, it’s having sex, not parenting.” Moira added unhelpfully.

The subject having come full hellish circle to the consideration of Torbjörn’s sex life, Hana tuned into the other side of the table.

“I see you chose an unlikely item for your portkey, Madame Lacroix!” Reinhardt was saying, pointing to the Fabergé egg on the table next to her. “Normally, we just use whatever junk is lying around!”

“Zis _was_ junk I had lying around.” She said tonelessly. “Keep it if you want. I find it gaudy; I ‘ave been using it as a doorstop in my winter chalet in the Alps.”

The fight over who would receive the Fabergé egg was excruciatingly polite but incredibly fierce. In the end, Reinhardt overextended himself and _insisted_ that Winston take it, which the astronomy professor did not disagree with fervently enough. The idea that Madame Lacroix was rich enough to be using Fabergé eggs as doorstops boggled Hana’s mind slightly, as she had put herself through her T.O.A.D (Totally Obnoxious Academic Diploma) after Hogwarts by moonlighting as a champion in London’s illegal underground gobstones scene. The prize money hadn’t been much, but it had allowed her to pay for her accommodation and food throughout her teaching diploma.

She wondered what could possibly have attracted Lena and Madame Lacroix together. Lena was chipper, energetic, and a Gryffindor through and through. Yet Madame Lacroix was this laconic, drawling, snooty Frenchwoman who didn’t honestly seem like she had much care for anyone. Was it money? But Lena had been an international Quidditch player, she’d made enough money through sponsorships and endorsements. Was it looks? There was no denying that Lacroix was gorgeous, but she was the kind of untouchable gorgeous you saw in high fashion models, the kind that seems odd in the real world.

Hana was still puzzling this unlikely coupling when Lena herself arrived to the table, escorted by Fareeha. Reinhardt conjured them up more seats and they joined the table together, sandwiched between Torbjörn and Satya. Hana noted that Lena took the seat furthest from Madame Lacroix.

“I was just in the hospital wing to report to Morrison and Reyes.” Fareeha explained, almost drooling as her stomach rumbled and Satya passed her a joint of roast lamb. “And I found Lena having her head healed shut!”

“Librarians are vicious creatures.” Lena muttered, looking much more put-down than before. Mei patted her shoulder gently, leaning behind Satya’s chair.

“She’ll come round to understand, Lena. Give her time.”

“We’ve been married for six years! That’s a lot of time for her to learn to trust me, you’d think!”

“Even if you were on a break, she’s still human, she can’t help being jealous.” Hana said wisely. “She’ll realise she’s overreacting when she sees how much you dislike Madame Lacroix.”

“Incidentally,” Ana squeezed in, “ _Why_ do you hate Amélie Lacroix?”

“It’s a long stor- hang on, I’m not telling you anything!” Lena fumed. “I don’t want to start this conversation again. Pass the sausages, please.”

She proceeded to spear a chipolata on her fork and chew it morosely, staring at the doors into the great hall as though hoping Emily would enter through them any moment. It was like watching a puppy left out in the rain.

When they were all stuffed to bursting, and the last of the spotted dick and custard disappeared, Reinhardt once again stood and Torbjörn claw-smashed for silence.

“Now we are all fed and watered, may I present… the Goblet of Fire!”

The caretaker Mako Rutledge brought it out of the room behind the teachers’ table and placed it tenderly upon a platform where the sorting hat would normally sit at the start of term feast. With a click of Reinhardt’s fingers, blue fire sprang up inside the goblet.

“You have until the Halloween feast tomorrow to submit your names. Only sixth and seventh year students will be allowed to enter – if anyone below the age of seventeen tries, the goblet will simply spit your name back out.”

“For an ancient magical artefact, it was quite easy to enchant that small addition to its choosing criteria.” Hana whispered. “You’d think anyone who didn’t bother was asking for a younger student to get accidentally chosen and witness the rise of a dark lord. But, nah. That’s crazy.”

“So! All our hopefuls, please write your name and school on a piece of paper and drop it into the flames in the next twenty-four hours. I wish you the very best of luck, and I also wish you a restful sleep after your long journeys. Goodnight!”

The students all stood up chaotically and started to leave. Professor Zaryanova reluctantly drained the last of her mulled mead and bid them goodnight, ushering her students towards the lodgings that had been created for them just off the entrance hall in several disused classrooms. Hana had taken a peek in there earlier and had been pleasantly surprised to find that the inside of the rooms now resembled a rustic but cosy hunting lodge, complete with bearskin rugs, squashy sofas and a blazing fire, with several bunkrooms and bathrooms extending into hammerspace beyond.

“Ave you prepared quarters to my specifications?” Madame Lacroix asked Reinhardt, her students waiting in the entrance hall.

“Well, we couldn’t quite recreate the luxury I know you are used to in Château Guillard, but you will see zat the renovation of the east annexe…”

Reinhardt escorted her up the stairs and away, her students following curiously.

“So _that’s_ why they finally repaired the east annexe!” Lena said angrily. “That place has been a deathtrap for years, and just because Madame ‘I say jump and you ask how high’ Lacroix is coming to stay, they spend all that time and money poshing it up! You know, last year I had to mount a full rescue party to save one of my Gryffindor first-years from the man-eating grandfather clock in there? And what about the lethifold that was haunting the annexe toilets and kept trying to suffocate people? We complain for years, and they do nothing, and she – she just turns up and – and!”

Mei and Hana guided Lena to take several deep, steadying breaths.

“Lena, what’s really going on? You never get anxious like this.” Mei asked with concern, offering a cardigan for Lena’s comfort.

“It’s nothing! She’s just entitled is all. It annoys me.”

“I believe that even less than I believe Moira when she tries to insist she’s thirty-four.” Fareeha snorted. “Lena, we all love you _and_ Emily, and you two obviously love each other very much. But we can’t help you if you don’t explain what’s going on.”

Lena looked like she was teetering on the very edge of telling them, but bit her lip and shook her head. “I’m sorry. I just can’t say. I appreciate you’re trying to help, I really do. But I just… I’ve got some stuff to do. Cheers, loves. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

With a very uncharacteristic weight of gloom and worry on her shoulders, Lena left up to her office. Fareeha, Mei and Hana watched her go, puzzled by this strange behaviour. Once Lena was fully out of sight, they turned to each other.

“I don’t know about you two,” Fareeha said, “But I’m feeling like a little investigation is in order.”

“I’m in. I don’t like seeing Lena so upset.” Mei said.

Hana nodded. “We’ve got to find out what about Lacroix has Lena so rattled, then figure out how we can fix her marriage!”

“And also we need to teach all our classes and do all our marking and run the extracurriculars we’re in charge of.” Fareeha reminded her. They all groaned in unison.

“Why did we become teachers again?”

“The holidays.” Mei said promptly.

“The money!” Hana said.

Fareeha raised an eyebrow at them both. “Well, I, for one, became a teacher because I deeply enjoy shaping young minds.”

They stared at her.

“Oh, okay, it _was_ mainly the holidays.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for your wonderful comments and kudos. It's made my festive period even brighter. I hope you had a good time whatever and wherever you are, and I'll see you for the next chapter in 2019!
> 
> -Argo


	6. We Are (Watching) the Champions (Being Selected)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A day of pranks on Halloween causes chaos in Fareeha and Mei's classes. The Triwizard Champions are chosen, and Ana feasts on humble pie.
> 
> CHARACTERS: Mercy, Pharah, Mei, and Ensemble!

It was excruciatingly difficult to get any students to concentrate at all the next day. For one thing, it was a Friday, which always instilled a certain sense of frivolity in the castle. For the second, it was Halloween, and the arrival of the crowds from Durmstrang and Beauxbatons had spurred the known school pranksters to new heights. And for the third, the selection of the champions was underway.

Breakfast was rudely interrupted by the bombastic arrival of Brigitte Lindholm, surrounded by her friends and admirers. She held her name on a piece of paper high above her and waved it like a flag as she jogged down the aisle towards the Goblet of Fire.

“Oh, they grow up so fast!” Torbjörn wailed, blowing his nose and wiping his streaming eyes. “Go get ‘em, my Brigitte! Make daddy proud!”

Brigitte clenched her jaw and avoided eye contact as students laughed. “Papa!”

“Ah, don’t make a chicken out of a feather! Let your papa be proud of his baby!”

Several of the professors stifled laughter in their mugs of tea or goblets of pumpkin juice. Brigitte was Torbjörn’s eldest, and they could not wait for his other eleven younger children to start at Hogwarts. The chaos would be entertaining to watch, if not rather harrowing to anticipate.

Despite her father’s best efforts to embarrass her into a coma, Brigitte submitted her name to a plume of crackling fire from the goblet and applause from the Gryffindor table.

“She’s one to watch, Brigitte Lindholm.” Fareeha opined, gesturing with her fork at her retreating figure. “Excellent in my lessons. She has a knack for the shield charm that I’ve rarely seen before. I’d say she has the makings of an auror.”

“High praise from you, Fareeha.” Angela said with a small smile. “Though I have heard she is considering a career as a healer. Even Professor O’Deorain begrudgingly admits her prowess at potions.”

“Perhaps she’ll be the first healer-auror hybrid.” Fareeha said. “Morning, Lena – Merlin, you look awful.”

“Love you too.” Lena plonked herself down and pulled a rack of toast towards her. She winced and stretched her neck, which made a worrying cracking sound. She was wearing the same robes as yesterday, and her hair was even more unkempt than usual, sticking out at odd angles. The bags under her eyes and the grimace on her face as she forced down toast told them that she had slept on the sofa in her office last night.

Fareeha shared a significant look with Mei and Hana, but they were unable to do anything just then as they all had lessons first period.

“Fareeha! Wait a moment!” Angela caught up with her in the entrance hall. “Here, you should take this.”

She handed Fareeha a small pot of strong-smelling cream the colour of snot.

“Um, I’m always glad to receive a gift, Angela, but…” Fareeha sniffed the contents of the pot and recoiled. “Well, it’s not exactly my signature scent.”

Angela laughed and touched Fareeha’s shoulder, which made Fareeha suddenly very receptive to accepting the gift of stinking cream.

“Oh, Fareeha! It’s Contusion Concealer. I overheard some of your fifth-year boys planning a prank involving exploding chalk, so I thought I would mix some up in case they go through with it.”

Touched by the gesture, Fareeha bowed, then felt stupid because who bows in this day and age, so ended up doing an awkward jerking movement with her upper body.

“Are you quite all right?”

“Yes! Yes, fine, um, thank you for the cream, Angela. I’ll watch out for suspicious chalk.”

“I hope not to see you in my Hospital Wing, then.” Angela smiled. “I mean, not that I hope you don’t come and see me, because of course I enjoy your company, but what I mean is I hope you don’t get injured.”

They parted awkwardly, Fareeha heading upstairs with the pot of cream held out in front of her like it was as valuable as Madame Lacroix’s Fabergé egg. Angela strode briskly towards the hospital wing, but noticed out of the corner of her eye that Moira was lingering by the passage to the dungeons with a smug smirk on her lips.

“If ever there was the dictionary definition of ‘lesbian disaster’, Madam Ziegler, it would include a description of you.” She chortled at her own brilliance and swanned off to her class.

Angela scuttled back to her office to nurse her wounded pride and to berate herself for thinking that Contusion Concealer would be a sweet gift to Fareeha.

Professor Amari the younger, on the other hand, faced her fifth-year class with her hands on her hips and her wand in her hand. They had foolishly attempted the exploding chalk prank at the very beginning of class, and she had successfully evaded the resultant shrapnel and docked a large number of points from Slytherin. Feeling pleased with herself, she went to continue her lesson on counter-jinxes.

“Some people look down on jinxes as the weakest form of offensive spell, but the correctly selected jinx can often be more effective than the trickiest curse when used for defence.” She explained. Immediately a hand shot up.

“Yes, Mr. Rosenberg?”

“But, why not use a stunning spell?”

“A good point.” Fareeha smiled. “Let’s try it. Stand up, and why don’t you fire a stunning spell at me?”

Dominic Rosenberg looked around to his friends nervously. It was rare you got the opportunity to curse your teacher. He stood up and readied his wand.

“ _Stupefy_!”

A jet of red light shot out of his wand towards Fareeha. She stepped calmly out of the way, allowing the stunning spell to hit the blackboard and send it spinning wildly.

“As you can see, the stunning spell is a very small projectile. You have to be accurate to make contact with your opponent, and in a real fight, you won’t have the luxury of hitting a stationary target.” She smiled, then returned the blackboard to its position. “Why don’t you try again, Mr. Rosenberg, and this time I won’t move.”

Fareeha stood cool as a cucumber as Dominic shot another spell at her. It hit her square in the chest, and she winced a little, then laughed. “Not a chance, Mr. Rosenberg.”

“What? But I hit you!”

“Yes, you did. But your stunning spell is weak; you’re still learning. Powerful witches and wizards can resist stunning spells, and even if you manage to knock your opponent off their feet, their brain – and hands – are still free to counterattack.”

As she said this, she shot a spell back towards him. It impacted with a crackle of electricity, and Dominic started to jerk and yelp, hopping around on the spot.

“You see? A simple shock jinx. Designed to embarrass your foe with small electric shocks, but very effective at stopping Mr. Rosenberg from attacking. And much more easily cast, even by less experienced wizards.”

She lifted the jinx and Dominic collapsed into his chair with his hair sticking up with static, looking sheepish.

“Thank you for raising a useful question, Mr. Rosenberg. Five points to Ravenclaw for helping with my demonstration.” She said. She couldn’t exactly jinx a student without giving them some kind of reward. “Now, if you turn to page fifty-seven in _The Dark Forces: A Guide to Self-Protection_ , you’ll see a list of common anti-jinxes. In pairs, work together to figure out how each jinx would be of defensive use. After the exercise, we’ll put theory into practice and get you trying to counter the stunning spell with various anti-jinxes.”

They set to work, and Fareeha walked amongst them answering questions and offering help. She was proud of how far her classes had come on in the year she’d been teaching. Perhaps it ran in the family, she thought with great amusement. Her father had been a teacher once too, but he now lived in Canada with his new wife and family. She saw him some holidays, but he’d made his choice, and Ana had made hers.

Ana, however, would have been less likely to grow as complacent on Halloween.

“Professor Amari?” Giles Adams asked with his hand in the air. “I can’t remember the wand movement for the stepped-on-a-lego jinx.”

Fareeha frowned. “I haven’t heard of that one, but let me look it up.”

She took _The Bluffer’s Guide to Intermediate Jinxwork_ out of her bookshelf and took a seat at her desk, opening it up with the intention of checking the index.

As soon as she cracked the spine, a whipcrack-loud explosion sent her whole chair skidding backwards and slamming into the dented blackboard. When the smoke from the jinx cleared, Fareeha’s face was covered in angry welts and the class were beside themselves with glee. To add insult to injury, the bell rang through the castle halls and the students responsible fled from the classroom for morning break before she could strangle them with her bare hands.

Slamming the book shut and fuming at being outsmarted by a bunch of teenagers, Fareeha stalked the corridor to the staffroom. It was quiet, for now, as other teachers’ classes had not left quite so quickly. She sat down, poured herself a cup of coffee and pulled the Contusion Concealer out of her robes. It still smelled appauling, but it was better than a faceful of boils.

She started to clumsily apply it with her fingers, feeling it smart and sting as it soothed the welts. The door opened, and Angela walked in with an armful of back issues of _The Healer’s Guild Gazette_ with a croissant perched on top.

“Oh, Fareeha!” She gasped, dropping her magazines and the croissant in shock. “What happened?”

“Your tip on the exploding chalk was good,” Fareeha grumbled, trying to get the cream in the grooves behind her nostrils, “But they had a backup. Some kind of skin-stinging enchantment in my copy of _The Bluffer’s Guide to Intermediate Jinxwork_.”

“Well, they did a good job at least.” Angela tutted, then whisked the cream from Fareeha’s hands. “Looks like I’ll be patching you up again. Hold still.”

Fareeha tried not to blush as Angela’s soft fingers rubbed the cream into her skin, soothing the stinging. Angela was rather close to her, leaning over, so that Fareeha could smell her subtle perfume intermingled with the evergreen smell of disinfectant. Her blonde hair, slightly loose from its tie, tickled Fareeha’s head.

Angela frowned and placed her hand on Fareeha’s forehead. “Are you feeling all right, Fareeha? You’re burning up!”

“No, I’m fine.” She cleared her throat and felt her now boil-free face. “Thank you, Angela. You… you have the softest touch. I’d get sick more often if I knew I’d get such good treatment.”

It was Angela’s turn to blush, but she hid the way her cheeks glowed pink and she bit her lip by stopping to retrieve her magazines and croissant.

They sat in companionable, if not slightly awkward, silence for several minutes before other teachers arrived. Torbjörn complained loudly that it was too quiet and jabbed his wand at the gramophone in the corner until it screeched into life playing a slightly warped version of Shadele’s _Hex Fire to the Rain_.

Soon the staffroom was full of chattering teachers making the most of their morning break. Hana had a pile of Charms essays stacked in front of her and was frantically marking in time to return them next lesson; Fareeha took pity on her and took half of them to mark herself, since she only had first-years next who required nothing more complex in terms of teaching than a cageful of doxies and the occasional reminder to refrain from behaving like skittish baboons.

The next three lessons were an exercise in damage control. Known prankster Sanjay Korpal went on a hexing spree from a vantage point atop the statue of Gregory the Smarmy on the first floor, using a tricky delayed Hirsuitism Hex that sent several girls into floods of tears as, twenty minutes afterwards, they began to sprout magnificent moustaches. Professor Vaswani handed out an unprecedented two months of detentions to a Gryffindor who transfigured her favourite armchair into a warthog just as she went to sit on it. Mei took a different tack, attempting to appease her students by handing out chocolate frogs. This appeared to have worked until just before lunchtime, when she was saying a mei-rry farewell to her N.E.W.T. Muggle studies class.

“And remember – I want your essays on muggle morality and belief systems in by next Wednesday. The title is ‘The World Is Worth Saving’!”

She watched them packing up, and started to tidy the classroom. She had a third-year class after lunch, for whom she’d prepared a detailed diagram of an electrical plug on the other side of the blackboard. She flipped it over, only to discover a life-size chalk drawing of herself and Professor Zaryanova engaged in a position that could only be described as ‘implausible, but nevertheless tempting to try’.

Her strangled yell echoed to the very edge of the grounds, stirring the giant squid from its afternoon nap and shattering several of the windows in north tower.

The teachers took their seats at the Halloween feast exhausted, bedraggled, and in the case of Professor O’Deorain, still possessing a lobster claw instead of a left hand. It seemed she was unable to change it back on her own without significant effort, and was too proud to report to Madam Ziegler for healing.

Since it was their second feast in as many days, nobody felt much like stuffing their faces except Professor Zaryanova, who piled her plate high with pork chops and mashed potatoes and proceeded to – well, the best word for it was ‘inhale’ – her meal.

No, everybody was too preoccupied with the crackling flames within the Goblet of Fire. In just a few moments, it would spit out the three champions’ names and the Triwizard Tournament would begin.

Ana was scribbling on a piece of parchment under the table, tallying and logging the last of the bets. Christian Bayless, Seventh-year Slytherin, was the 3:1 favourite to win the Hogwarts spot, but Torbjorn still fiercely maintained it would be his daughter Brigitte who won – even though Ana was only offering 10:1 odds on her. Professor Zaryanova had been persuaded to flutter ten galleons on her favourite, a terrifying Durmstrang seventh-year girl with the body of a ten-year-old and the face of a Medieval central Asian Warlord. If Ghenghis Khan went gothic Lolita, the result would be Natalka Ylinkovitch.

Although the puddings lingered, nobody could bring themselves to put off the selection any longer, not even to stuff one last exquisite profiterole into their mouths. Reinhardt obviously sensed the mood, because, with a nod to Professor Zaryanova and Madame Lacroix, he stood up. The hall had never fallen so quiet so quickly.

“Well! I shan’t keep you on tenterhooks any longer – let us select our champions!”

The whole hall collectively took a great breath in as the goblet’s flames flashed red, and a small slip of parchment flew out and into Reinhardt’s waiting hand.

“The champion from Beauxbatons is… Jean-Marc Lefeuvre!”

A handsome, slim boy in blue silk stood up to polite applause from the hall. He was the one who had played the violin during yesterday’s performance: dark-skinned and clever, he gave the impression of being particularly perceptive with the way his eyes scanned the hall. He shook Reinhardt’s hand and left into the annexe room behind the teachers’ table.

The goblet turned red once more, and the next name shot like an arrow straight at Reinhardt’s face. He stopped it scalping him just in time, chuckled, and read: “The champion from Durmstrang is… Natalka Ylinkovitch!”

Femme Ghengis jumped to her feet, which did not change her height a great deal – she barely came to Reinhardt’s waist when she shook his hand with a particularly claw-like grip. After she had joined Jean-Marc in the annexe, Reinhardt winced and cradled his squeezed hand gingerly to his chest.

After a few seconds’ tense pause, the goblet flared for the last time, and a ribbon of parchment fluttered down into Reinhardt’s good hand. He read it quickly and broke out into a huge grin.

“The champion for Hogwarts is Brigitte Lindholm!”

The hall exploded into hooting and clapping and stomping, with Brigitte lifted aloft by her fellow Gryffindors in triumph. Christian Bayless slumped in his seat, seething, but Lena seemed to have at last found something to lift her from her slump.

“That’s my girl, Brigitte! You go get ‘em, champ!” She cheered, clapping enthusiastically as Brigitte shook Reinhardt’s hand six times.

Nobody, however, was louder or more inappropriate than Torbjörn, who seemed to have gone into overload. He jumped up on the table and began a furious stomping riot, sending sparks out of the tip of his wand and wailing.

“That’s my baby!” He sobbed as she passed. “Do daddy proud, my Brigitte!”

They’d never seen somebody make a lunge for the annexe quite so quickly.

Reinhardt, Madame Lacroix and Professor Zaryanova with Lúcio Correia dos Santos in tow all joined them in the annexe to congratulate and inform the champions. The rest of the hall, left outside, broke into gossip and guesswork and excitement.

The only person who did not seem excited was Ana.

“Ten to one… five hundred galleons…” She whispered, looking down her piece of paper. “ _Alqarf!_ I don’t have five thousand galleons!”

Torbjörn gave her a menacing smile. “Well, then I’ll take what you do have, and as for the rest…”

The rest of the staff watched as Torbjörn forced Ana to accept all of this night-time corridor patrol duties over the Christmas holidays _and_ made her promise a hundred hours of babysitting time so that he and Mrs. Lindholm could go on a couples’ spa retreat to Aya Napa after Christmas. Left penniless and deeply overbooked thanks to her hubris, Ana slunk off early to curse at the moon or brood over tea, whatever it was she did when alone in her beloved greenhouses.

“Well, at least we have a little breathing room before the first task.” Mei said gratefully, draining her glass of chocolate milk. “Not until the end of November, right?”

“Indeed.” Fareeha yawned, stretching muscular arms above her head. “I, for one, am in need of a good weekend.”

“I think we all are.” Hana sighed. “Oh! We should go to Hogsmeade this weekend!”

“An excellent idea.” Fareeha agreed, cottoning on. “Mei, Lena, Satya?”

“Alas, my crochet tapestry of the Pythagorean Theorem needs work.”

“All weekend?”

“ _All_ weekend.” She confirmed.

“Right. Well, enjoy.” Hana rolled her eyes. “Mei, you’re always game for a few drinks in the Three Broomsticks, right?”

“Of course!”

“And Lena?”

Lena avoided her eyes. “Ah… I dunno…”

“We’ll take that as an enthusiastic yes by any other name.” Fareeha said sternly, determined to get Lena away from the castle and stop her moping.

“Oh, and Fareeha, you can ask Angela.”

Fareeha choked mid-sip on her pumpkin juice. “As-ask Angela?”

“Well, provided she doesn’t have patients, I reckon she’d love to get out for a drink. And she seems to like you in particular, so you should go find her and ask.” Hana said.

The sight of former Magical Law Enforcement Patrol Captain Fareeha Amari purple in the face with a mixture of fluid aspiration and embarrassment was something Hana Song had never expected to see, but was immensely proud of causing. Teachers were just the adults who’d hated the idea of growing up so much they’d gone back to school, she decided.

“Well, now that’s settled, we should get to bed.”

“Speak for yourself.” Fareeha sighed. “I’ve got corridor patrol with Winston tonight, and you just _know_ the Gryffindors are going to throw a huge party for Brigitte. I’ll be chasing giggling students and breaking up moonlit make-outs all night.”

“Nothing wrong with a moonlit make-out.” Mei said absentmindedly, staring at the annexe door that Professor Zaryanova was just coming out of. The rest of them suppressed laughter at Mei’s utter inability to formulate a coherent thought around that woman.

The feast ended, with the teachers all promising to meet just before lunch in the entrance hall and walk into Hogsmeade together at the weekend. Fareeha gathered her courage and walked towards Professor Winston.

“Well, shall we get started?” She decided that this night’s patrol was something to get over and done with as quickly as possible, like an election or a Brazilian wax.

“Of course! But don’t worry about being bored, I just read a book about Jupiter’s moons, and it’s a _doozy_! Interesting enough to keep us up all night, I’d say!”

“All night.” Fareeha said apprehensively, her face fixed in a very bad impression of a smile. “Wonderful.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I haven't updated this story since... last year! How long! Or lol it was last week and the calendar works like that idk. Hope everyone's enjoying the story and that you all had a good holiday season. I'm back at placement for my degree in a hospital, so I have a bit less writing time but I will keep trying to update every Friday.
> 
> Get any good xmas presents? Kiss anyone inappropriate at midnight on New Year's? Sit in your pants playing Overwatch and drinking? Tell me your stories in the comments :)
> 
> -Argo

**Author's Note:**

> Right! With that done, some details!  
> I'm many chapters ahead and will be sticking to a posting schedule of one chapter a week, published every Friday evening British time. Some will be longer than others - they're each sort of loosely connected self-contained one-shots within the continuity of this AU.  
> Pairings, characters and tags will be added as they appear. Every OW character is in here in some way, or planned to appear. Except Bastion. I made him the Hogwarts Express idk.  
> I will also be accepting prompts for chapters you'd like to see - please submit these with your comment, including: prompt, characters involved, setting, and any relevant information. No guarantee I will write them, though, as I already have about 12 chapters planned out to work around, but if I use them I will give full credit to you!  
> Lastly, I really appreciate kudos and comments. I haven't written fanfiction in ages - I've been writing original fiction and essays for my degree. Go easy on me :)  
> NB: I've changed Brigitte from Torbjörn's youngest daughter to his eldest, to fit better with the story. Just to clarify!
> 
> -Argo


End file.
